Months after cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on the set of the film “Rust,” the co-producer of the project says he is “confident” the movie will resume filming and be completed.

In an interview published Monday by The Hollywood Reporter, Anjul Nigam, co-producer of “Rust” with actor Alec Baldwin, said he believes they’ll be able to finish “Rust” once the investigation into the shooting incident is complete.

“‘Rust’ is obviously a horrific tragedy,” Nigam told the publication. “The investigation will hopefully be resolved soon and will unveil what happened. Obviously, there will be people out there who will have negative perspectives, but we’re confident about continuing to make quality movies.”

Hutchins was shot and killed on Oct. 21 on the New Mexico set of “Rust” when a firearm held by Baldwin was discharged as they were rehearsing a scene. The investigation by the Santa Fe County Sherriff’s Department in ongoing.

Nigam said they are “confident” they’ll “be able to complete the movie” once the investigation is complete.

Nigam also announced plans for a new film project with Baldwin, called “False Awakenings,” in which Baldwin will star. They plan to begin production this summer.

CNN has contacted representatives for Nigam and Baldwin for comment.

Hutchins’ family filed a wrongful death suit against Nigam, Baldwin, the “Rust” crew and production company in February.

“We continue to cooperate with the authorities to determine how live ammunition arrived on the ‘Rust’ set in the first place. Any claim that Alec was reckless is entirely false. He, Halyna and the rest of the crew relied on the statement by the two professionals responsible for checking the gun that it was a ‘cold gun’ – meaning there is no possibility of a discharge, blank or otherwise,” Aaron Dyer, attorney for Baldwin and other producers of “Rust,” said in a statement to CNN at the time. “This protocol has worked on thousands of films, with millions of discharges, as there has never before been an incident on a set where an actual bullet harmed anyone.”

In April, Rust Movie Productions was fined nearly $137,000 by the New Mexico Environment Department’s Occupational Health Safety Bureau for safety violations.

If you’re seeking a streaming service focused primarily on movies, it’s not Prime Video or Netflix that deserves your attention – it’s Now. Which, yes, used to be called Now TV.

Sky’s cord-cutter service is better served with newer, bigger-name films than either of its main rivals, with at least one new movie being added every day to an already bulging collection.

The sheer size of that library means it’s not always easy to immediately find something to watch though (you know: the paralysis of choice and so on). Which is where we come in. The Stuff team has picked out a selection of must-see cinematic masterpieces both old and new, so the next time you’re settling down for an evening on the sofa, you can conserve your brainpower for picking the right snacks rather than the right movie.

Another Round

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“The formidable form of growing religious fanaticism in the country has raised its head again in many places. The brutal murders of activists of Hindu organizations in Kerala, Karnataka are an example of this menace. Series of dastardly acts revealing communal hysteria, rallies, demonstrations, violation of social discipline, custom and conventions under the guise of the Constitution and religious freedom, inciting violence by instigating meagre causes, promoting illegal activities, etc. is increasing,” the annual report, which was tabled at an RSS meeting in Ahmedabad, says.

Suggesting it to be a conspiracy with long-term goals, the report says: “There appear to be elaborate plans by a particular community to enter the government machinery. Behind all this, it seems that a deep conspiracy with a long-term goal is working. On the strength of numbers, preparations are being made to adopt any route to get their demands accepted.”

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The RSS report comes at a time when Karnataka continues to see protests by Muslim girl students over their right to wear hijab in schools and colleges. There is a growing concern within the RSS about the increasing influence of the Popular Front of India (PFI) in university campuses.

While the RSS has not actively engaged on the issue and believes the matter should have been handled locally, senior Sangh leaders have flagged the controversy as proof of the PFI’s ambition to spread its wings through assertion of religious identity.

The report was released at the RSS’s Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha(ABPS) baithak being held in Ahmedabad to take stock of the work done by the Sangh in the past one year, chart out the future course of action and discuss issues of national importance facing the nation.

The ABPS is the highest decision-making body of the RSS. On Sunday, the meeting is expected to pass a resolution on what needs to be done to address unemployment.

In the annual report, the Sangh has also raised the issue of religious conversions.

“There is continuous information about the planned conversion of Hindus in different parts of the country like Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh etc. This challenge has a long history, but, of late, different, newer ways of converting new groups are being adopted. It is true that the social and religious leadership and institutions of Hindu society have woken up to some extent and become active to check this trend. It seems necessary to make joint and coordinated efforts in this direction in a more planned manner,” the report says.

While on one hand Hindu society is “awakening” and “standing up with self-respect”, the Sangh says, there are “inimical forces which do not tolerate this”.

The challenge of “increasing divisive elements” is also alarming, says the report, warning about efforts to weaken society through “various fissiparous tendencies in Hindu society itself”. “As the Census year approaches, there are instances of inciting a group by propagating that ‘they are not Hindus’,” it says, while condemning “conspiracies to make unwarranted allegations against Hindutva” and alleging a “malicious agenda” under “intellectual garb”.

The report goes on to talk about the post-poll violence in West Bengal and the episode during the Punjab elections where Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to abort plans to address a rally after a protest blocked his cavalcade.

“Competition is essential in the political field, but it should be in a healthy spirit, and should be within the purview of democracy; the race should facilitate ideological brainstorming, and strengthen the development of society… The most condemnable incident of stopping the convoy of the Honourable Prime Minister of the country in the name of farmers’ agitation on the main road while he was going for a scheduled program, was certainly a challenge for security; but at the same time, this heinous act has also raised questions about political decorum, the central-state relation, the sentiment towards constitutional posts, etc,” the report says.

Peter Knegt remembers sneaking out to video stores as a teenager searching for films that he could relate to. 

Sometimes, he couldn’t find anything.

“The accessibility that queer youth have now to this content is very new,” Knegt said. “It’s remarkable … and is going to go a long way in helping them get through tough times if they have them.”

The abundance of LGBTQ film and television programs available to stream now gives audiences — both inside and out of the community — a wide variety of content to choose from.

It’s all part of a shift from one-dimensional storytelling to accommodate demand for stories that showcase the joy of LGBTQ life, those in the industry told CBC. Films that once centred around trauma-filled coming-out narratives or rejection by family members are getting replaced by original stories. 

That’s also due to the rise in LGBTQ filmmakers, many of whom take inspiration from authentic personal experiences. 

Knegt, who is also a columnist for CBC Arts, says he’s excited about this nascent diversity — and to see where things are going.

“I think people are curious about cultures … that they don’t belong to because that’s not what their day-to-day life is like. We all watch The Crown, but none of us know what that feels like,” Knegt said.

What was missing

In curating the recent Inside Out film festival in Toronto, Andrew Murphy and Elie Chivi were keen on highlighting films that depict heartwarming, funny and joyful stories, something they felt was missing within LGBTQ cinema.

“We deserve happy stories … it’s time for happy stories,” said Chivi who is director of development and co-head of the festival.

Growing up in the Middle East, Chivi had trouble finding films that depicted anything outside of heteronormative culture. If he had access to LGBTQ content, he said it was inherently negative or very dark.

But stories that speak to the truth of LGBTQ lives are essential, he said.

“It’s like a snapshot of what life could be for someone on the other side of the world,” he said.

As the audience for these stories grows, so has the demand for films that showcase the full breadth of what LGBTQ life can be.

“Our stories matter and queer stories matter,” said Murphy, co-head and director of programming at Inside Out. “We need to keep working to get more of them out there.”

With Wonder celebrates queer liberation

One of the liberating films highlighted in this year’s festival was Canadian film director Sharon Lewis’ documentary With Wonder.

The film highlights the multifaceted relationship between LGBTQ individuals and Christian communities — and how, for some, it can be a positive relationship rather than one that is marked by rejection. 

In creating the film, Lewis said she did not want to present a “one-dimensional account” of LGBTQ life, acknowledging that many programs seem to define queer people by trauma and otherness.

“The reason films are about … our hardships and our suffering is because those films get funded for the mainstream, [for] non-queer audiences who want to learn about us,” she said.

But by telling the story herself, Lewis says, she is not teaching. Instead, she is sharing, revealing and exploring.

Former LGBTQ films pave the way

Industry watchers say that the mid-1990s marked the start of LGBTQ romantic comedies reaching mainstream audiences; films like The Birdcage and In Out were big hits.

However, some films included characters that were part of the community but mainly in the form of tropes like the “gay best friend.”

“Sometimes we’d see storytelling and they throw a queer character in, but there’s nothing queer about them,” Lewis said “It’s just tokenizing.”

Then films like Brokeback Mountain, Call Me by Your Name and Imagine Me and You began to pave the way for films that brought LGBTQ storylines back to the forefront.

In 2016, Moonlight broke down doors as the first film with an LGBTQ main character to take home the Oscar for best picture.

“I keep seeing us moving toward that direction, and I am not going to ever give up,” Lewis said.

Fire Island marks exciting future 

While earlier films featured stories about the LGBTQ community, the new comedy Fire Island is the first major studio-released romantic comedy that was created by and stars queer creatives.

The film was written by Joel Kim Booster and directed by Andrew Ahn as a loose adaptation of the popular Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice. It explores queer relationships as it follows a group of friends on their annual trip to the Fire Island Pines.

“I think that with The Birdcage and In Out, for example, there’s a lot of straight people involved there,” Booster said in an interview with CBC Arts.

Just in time for Pride Month, viewers can connect with the unique personalities showcase in the film, which began streaming June 3 on Disney+. 

Noah (Joel Kim Booster) is the passionate and confident leader of the pack, keen to find Howie (Bowen Yang) a confidence-boosting fling after the long-time friend confides he feels lonely.

Alongside those two, is their lesbian mother figure, Erin (Margaret Cho) and their friends Luke (Matt Rogers), Max (Torian Miller), and Keegan (Tomás Matos) — each of whom bring a certain flair to the film. 

“I’m excited to move into this space with a movie like Fire Island and I hope that it inspires more movies like this,” Ahn said.

And with the upcoming release of Bros, written by Nicholas Stroller and Billy Eichner, marking the next major studio-released gay romantic comedy, queer content is something Hollywood is now investing in.

For Knegt, this new wave of films leaves him feeling excited for the future. 

“We’re getting much more variety now, and that’s really hopeful,” Knegt said. “I grew up watching depictions of a certain kind of gay man that I thought I was supposed to be.”

He said that “really messes with people” and gives them “messed-up perspectives” as to who they should be and how they should act. 

“So to have this variety out there, I think, is just really important,” he said. “It makes me optimistic, at least for where things are going.

These plans include expanding the base of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in southern India and reaching out to sections within the Muslim community not aligned with the PFI.

The Sangh believes that the student wing of PFI, the Campus Front of India (CFI), was instrumental in galvanising minority students on the hijab controversy in Karnataka and was successful in making it a national issue.

The Karnataka HC recently ruled that hijab is not an essential practice in Islam and so if a school does not allow it, students can’t insist on wearing the hijab. Students have challenged the order in the Supreme Court now.

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“The PFI, which used to be limited to Kerala once, is fast spreading its wings. It is in campuses everywhere in the South and has now begun making forays in the North too. During the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in UP, they played an important role. There is a need to counter their growing influence,” a senior RSS leader told The Indian Express.

What has rattled the Sangh the most is that the PFI’s organisational structure and functioning is quite similar to the RSS. “They have socio-cultural outreach, they are in campuses and even have a wing which conducts parades and marches just like the Sangh does. They have shown that they are here for a long haul,” another leader said.

According to sources, the Sangh plans to embark on a public outreach programme across the country to expose PFI and tell the truth on “misinformation spread by the outfit”.  This would be coupled with outreach to sections within the minority community.

“Not all Muslims are aligned with PFI ideology. A large number of them do not like its militant activism. We have to reach out to them,” an RSS functionary said.

Apart from this, the Sangh plans to expand further in campuses in south India. “We already have a very good network in Karnataka. Even in Telangana, we are doing very well. In Kerala we are fighting but the Left continues to dominate campuses. In Andhra, we have work to do in the coastal areas. In Tamil Nadu too we have to increase our influence,” a leader said.

ABVP currently has 33,44,917 members.

Many in the RSS believe that the government must ban PFI, given many reports by agencies against the outfit. “We are not the government,  which may have its own compulsions of law and process. But working with society is our realm,” another functionary said.

In its annual report tabled during the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha baithak in Gujarat recently, the RSS said there was “growing religious fanaticism” in the country in the guise of “Constitution and religious freedom” and “elaborate plans by a particular community to enter the government machinery”.

It also called for “all-out efforts with organized strength” to “defeat this menace”.

Suggesting it to be a conspiracy with long-term goals, the report said: “There appear to be elaborate plans by a particular community to enter the government machinery. Behind all this, it seems that a deep conspiracy with a long-term goal is working. On the strength of numbers, preparations are being made to adopt any route to get their demands accepted.”

Lamenting that many battles fought by Indian kings against invaders have been forgotten, Shah said that those battles, such as the ones waged by Ahom kings in Assam and Chhatrapati Shivaji-led Marathas, ensured that India reached where it has now.

Shah said that now, no one can stop the process of writing about these battles for the next generation. “It’s a fact that some have distorted history. They have written whatever they had to. But who can stop us…nobody can stop us. History is not created by governments but built on true events,” the senior BJP leader said while releasing the book, “Maharanas: A Thousand Year War for Dharma”, authored by Omendra Ratnu, an ENT surgeon from Jaipur.

According to Shah, efforts to  bring out facts through new history books should be “bigger and more intense than those that spread lies” so that they “can be effective”.

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The RSS and BJP have always maintained that history books in India were crafted by Left-oriented authors who, according to them, ignored the contributions of Hindu kings and kingdoms.

Shah had earlier urged filmmakers to focus on unsung heroes. In April, he was present at an event to mark the screening of “Vidrohi”, a TV serial based on the life of Odia freedom fighter Buxi Jagabandhu. Last week, he attended a special screening of Samrat Prithviraj, a movie on Prithviraj Chauhan.

On Friday, Shah warned that while books like “Maharanas”, which is about “the resistance of Mewar kings for 1,000 uninterrupted years to Islamic invaders”, will trigger debates through which youngsters will know about India’s “glorious past”, it will take a long time for them to get established.

“If we begin researching and writing history, it will start debates, and the younger generation will start discussions. But it’s a long journey… Many significant events got forgotten as the dust of time has fallen on them. We have to unearth them and bring them before the people to awaken society,” he said.

Shah urged authors to write on dynasties like Pandyas, Ahoms, Chalukyas, Mauryas, Guptas, etc, because those who wrote history “overlooked” and “did not bother” to write about them.

“There are no reference books, either. I want to say, one should give up making comments on it but write on them to bring out the real history before people. This will gradually make the history, which we consider as false, disappear on its own,” he said, adding that a number of authors are working in this direction now.

दिल्ली में ‘महाराणा: सहस्र वर्षों का धर्मयुद्ध’ पुस्तक के विमोचन कार्यक्रम को संबोधित करते हुए। https://t.co/QrEC8a0qDk

— Amit Shah (@AmitShah) June 10, 2022

Shah said that although the Government has started initiatives to document “actual history”, the exercise will be successful only when society takes it up as a mission.

“Had Veer Savarkar not been there, I can tell you, the truth about 1857 would not have come out… revolutions, which might have been defeated at that time, have the potential to awaken the society and the people. Padmavati’s sacrifice had given energy to women and men to live their lives, keeping their heads high… Documenting history is important because the outcome of events or revolts is immaterial…it should be weighed on the impact it has on people,” he said.

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“The invaders finished the language, culture and traditions of the regions they attacked, but they had to stop here in India… I can say with pride that whoever had fought for India and sacrificed for India would be resting in peace now because we are making them proud after so many years,” he said.

They’re really doing it

Video game adaptations continue to be all the rage, and now Duke Nukem gets to join in. The movie rights to Duke Nukem have been acquired by Legendary Entertainment.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Legendary has quite an interesting crew on board to produce the Duke Nukem project, too. Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg are reportedly on board.

Alongside Legendary Entertainment, Marla Studios will also be on to produce. Marla Studios was founded by Assassin’s Creed (the movie) producer Jean-Julien Baronnet and specializes in video game adaptations. THR reports the search for a writer is underway, and there’s no director attached just yet either.

There was a Duke Nukem film project in the works not too long ago, over at paramount. The project even had wrestling superstar John Cena attached to it, but the film reportedly stalled out.

The Duke is back?

By all accounts, this is some wild news. Duke Nukem may have been a heavy-hitter of the arena shooter era, but the series has stalled out. The infamously catastrophic Duke Nukem Forever seemed like it had forever shut the lid on new Duke Nukem games.

But not all video game heroes of the ’90s have faded into obscurity. Lara Croft had her revival in both video game and movie form, and Serious Sam has kept trucking along. 2016’s Doom was a brilliant revitalization, but it also made Doomguy a household name again.

Does Duke Nukem still have that appeal? Either way, Legendary Entertainment is picking the right team. The Cobra Kai is pretty dang good, and I’d imagine those showrunners could do something interesting with Duke. To be honest, after re-visiting the old Cena news, I’m now picturing a Peacemaker-style take on Duke Nukem and thinking it could somehow work.